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Kana
are syllabary, syllabaries used to write Japanese phonology, Japanese phonological units, Mora (linguistics), morae. In current usage, ''kana'' most commonly refers to ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. It can also refer to their ancestor , which were Kanji, Chinese characters used phonetically to transcribe Japanese language, Japanese (e.g. ''man'yōgana''); and ''hentaigana'', which are historical variants of the now-standard hiragana. Katakana, with a few additions, are also used to write Ainu language, Ainu. A Okinawan scripts, number of systems exist to write the Ryūkyūan languages, in particular Okinawan language, Okinawan, in hiragana. Taiwanese kana were used in Taiwanese Hokkien as ruby text for Chinese characters in Taiwan when it was Taiwan under Japanese rule, under Japanese rule. Each syllabogram, kana character corresponds to one phoneme or syllable, unlike kanji, which generally each logogram, corresponds to a morpheme. Apart from the five vowels, it is always ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived from components or fragments of more complex kanji. Katakana and hiragana are both kana systems. With one or two minor exceptions, each syllable (strictly mora (linguistics), mora) in the Japanese language is represented by one character or ''kana'' in each system. Each kana represents either a vowel such as "''a''" (katakana wikt:ア, ア); a consonant followed by a vowel such as "''ka''" (katakana wikt:カ, カ); or "''n''" (katakana wikt:ン, ン), a nasal stop, nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds like English ''m'', ''n'' or ''ng'' () or like the nasal vowels of Portuguese language, Portuguese or Galician language, Galician. In contrast to the hiragana syllabary, which is used for Japanese words not covered by kanji an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
仮名
are syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. In current usage, ''kana'' most commonly refers to ''hiragana'' and ''katakana''. It can also refer to their ancestor , which were Chinese characters used phonetically to transcribe Japanese (e.g. ''man'yōgana''); and ''hentaigana'', which are historical variants of the now-standard hiragana. Katakana, with a few additions, are also used to write Ainu. A number of systems exist to write the Ryūkyūan languages, in particular Okinawan, in hiragana. Taiwanese kana were used in Taiwanese Hokkien as ruby text for Chinese characters in Taiwan when it was under Japanese rule. Each kana character corresponds to one phoneme or syllable, unlike kanji, which generally each corresponds to a morpheme. Apart from the five vowels, it is always CV (consonant onset with vowel nucleus), such as ''ka'', ''ki'', ''sa'', ''shi'', etc., with the sole exception of the C grapheme for nasal codas usually romanised as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hiragana
is a Japanese language, Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", as contrasted with kanji). Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems. With few exceptions, each mora (linguistics), mora in the Japanese language is represented by one character (or one digraph) in each system. This may be a vowel such as /a/ (hiragana wikt:あ, あ); a consonant followed by a vowel such as /ka/ (wikt:か, か); or /N/ (wikt:ん, ん), a nasal stop, nasal sonorant which, depending on the context and dialect, sounds either like English ''m'', ''n'' or ''ng'' () when syllable-final or like the nasal vowels of French language, French, Portuguese language, Portuguese or Polish language, Polish. Because the characters of the kana do not represent single consonants (except in the case of the aforementioned ん), the kana are r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ainu Language
Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu (), is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, itself considered a language family isolate with no academic consensus of origin. It is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO ''Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger''. Until the 20th century, the Ainu languages – Hokkaido Ainu and the now-extinct Kuril Ainu and Sakhalin Ainu – were spoken throughout Hokkaido, the southern half of the island of Sakhalin and by small numbers of people in the Kuril Islands. Due to the colonization policy employed by the Japanese government, the number of Hokkaido Ainu speakers decreased through the 20th century, and it is now moribund. A very low number of elderly people still speak the language fluently, though attempts are being made to revive it. Speakers The term "Ainu" comes from the endonym of the Ainu people, ' (), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kanji
are logographic Chinese characters, adapted from Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script, used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequently-derived Syllabary, syllabic scripts of and . The characters have Japanese pronunciations; most have two, with one based on the Chinese sound. A few characters were invented in Japan by constructing character components derived from other Chinese characters. After the Meiji Restoration, Japan made its own efforts to simplify the characters, now known as , by a process similar to China's simplified Chinese characters, simplification efforts, with the intention to increase literacy among the general public. Since the 1920s, the Japanese government has published character lists periodically to help direct the education of its citizenry through the myriad Chinese characters that exist. There are nearly 3 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taiwanese Kana
Taiwanese kana (, , ) is a katakana-based writing system that was used to write Taiwanese Hokkien (commonly called "Taiwanese") when the island of Taiwan was under Japanese rule. It functioned as a phonetic guide to hanzi, much like furigana in Japanese or Zhuyin fuhao in Chinese. There were similar systems for other languages in Taiwan as well, including Hakka and Formosan languages. The system was imposed by Japan at the time and used in a few dictionaries, as well as textbooks. The ''Taiwanese–Japanese Dictionary'', published in 1931–32, is an example. It uses various signs and diacritics to identify sounds that do not exist in Japanese. The system is chiefly built for the Amoy dialect of Hokkien spoken in Taiwan, with some consideration for the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou dialects of Hokkien also spoken in Taiwan as well, which descendant speakers of all three of the historical major dialects of Hokkien thrived, developed, and intermixed in Taiwan for centuries pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Phonology
Japanese phonology is the system of sounds used in the pronunciation of the Japanese language. Unless otherwise noted, this article describes the standard variety of Japanese based on the Tokyo dialect. There is no overall consensus on the number of contrastive sounds (phonemes), but common approaches recognize at least 12 distinct consonants (as many as 21 in some analyses) and 5 distinct vowels, . Phonetic length is contrastive for both vowels and consonants, and the total length of Japanese words can be measured in a unit of timing called the mora (from Latin "delay"). Only limited types of consonant clusters are permitted. There is a pitch accent system where the position or absence of a pitch drop may determine the meaning of a word: (), (), (). Japanese phonology has been affected by the presence of several layers of vocabulary in the language: in addition to native Japanese vocabulary, Japanese has a large amount of Chinese-based vocabulary (used especially to fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Okinawan Scripts
Okinawan, spoken in Okinawa Island. Documents in Ryukyu Kingdom were written in kanji and hiragana, derived from Japan. Although generally agreed among linguists to be a distinct language, most Japanese, as well as some Okinawans, tend to think of Okinawan as merely a regional dialect of Japanese, even though it is not intelligible to monolingual Japanese speakers. Modern Okinawan is not written frequently. The Japanese writing system is used in Okinawan scripts. Systems Conventional usages The modern conventional ''ad hoc'' spellings found in Okinawa. Council system The system devised by the Council for the Dissemination of Okinawan Dialect沖縄方言普及協議会 University of the Ryukyus system This system was devised b a section of University of the Ryukyus. Unlike others, this method is intended purely as a phonetic guidance, and basically only uses katakana. For the sake of an easier comparison, corresponding hiragana are used in this article. New Okinawan let ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Man'yōgana
is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of this type of kana is not clear, but it was in use since at least the mid-7th century. The name "man'yōgana" derives from the '' Man'yōshū'', a Japanese poetry anthology from the Nara period written with ''man'yōgana.'' Texts using the system also often use Chinese characters for their meaning, but ''man'yōgana'' refers to such characters only when they are used to represent a phonetic value. The values were derived from the contemporary Chinese pronunciation, but native Japanese readings of the character were also sometimes used. For example, (whose character means 'tree') could represent (based on Middle Chinese ), , or (meaning 'tree' in Old Japanese). Simplified versions of ''man'yōgana'' eventually gave rise to both the hira ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hentaigana
In the Japanese writing system, are variant forms of hiragana. Description In contrast to modern Japanese, originally hiragana had several forms for a single sound. For example, while the hiragana reading "ha" has only one form in modern Japanese (は), until the Meiji era (1868–1912) it was written in various forms, including , , and . The shift to using only one character for each sound occurred as part of the Japanese script reform, 1900 script reform,, 1900 revision which also included other changes to the written language to standardize spelling (and was part of Meiji Restoration, a larger project to westernize the country). Because the selection of which hiragana glyphs would become standardized was instituted by the government at the time (rather than as a natural evolution of the writing system) variant kana are effectively unused in modern Japan, save for some limited situations such as signboards, calligraphy, place names, and personal names.#築島1981、pp.3 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Language
is the principal language of the Japonic languages, Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language, and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language. There have been many Classification of the Japonic languages, attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as Ainu languages, Ainu, Austronesian languages, Austronesian, Koreanic languages, Koreanic, and the now discredited Altaic languages, Altaic, but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Ja ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
